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Pearsall Surname Project
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Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
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laughed much at him,
and then so did the other folk. And when the cowl-man heard that, said
he:
The
girl mocks my dress,
And
laughs more than becomes a maid.
I
put to sea early this morning;
Few
would know an earl in a fisher's weeds.
Then the
cowl-man went his way, and afterwards men became aware that this cowl-man
had been Earl Rognvald. And it became known to
many men, that these were great tricks of his, creditable before God, and
interesting to men. And men knew it for a proverb, as it stood in the
stanza, `Few know an earl in fisher's weeds.'
The
history of our family is marked by successive residences in four geographical
divisions, namely-Norway, Normandy, England and America. It happens, through the way that we are telling the
story, that the generation of Rognvald is the
only one relating to Norway,
that is treated in a separate chapter. It will therefore be necessary at
this place to give a full account of all that relates to our family in Norway.
It will also serve to greater clearness to have all the characters in
which we are interested appear upon the stage of our observation in the
proper place, and in the same association with the leading characters of
their day as they actually lived according to the Sagas and other history
of the times.
Rognvald was contemporary with
Harold Fairhair of Norway, who was his cousin german. The reign of Harold Fairhair
marks in its record the commencement of written history in Norway.
It seems though to have been employed to crush and subdue the Norwegian
chieftains, over whom Harold held the nominal rule, and it was because
they would not be crushed, and because they would not be subdued, that so
many of them set out with their families and all their belongings for
Iceland, the Orkneys, England, France, and other lands, to seek that
position of self rule and freedom which was so sternly denied them at
home. [The Book of the Settlement of Iceland, 1908, by T. Ellwood, page xxiv-xxvi.]
Harold
Fairhair was the first to make a kingdom of Norway, which it has continued to
be ever since. His father, Halfdan the Black,
had already commenced this process, by hard fighting followed by wise
guidance of the conquered, but it was Harold Fairhair,
his son, who carried it out and completed it. Harold's birth year, death
year, and chronology in general are known only by inference, but by the
latest reckoning his birth is put down at 850; he began his reign in 860,
doubtless under tutelage, and died about the year 933 of our era, a man
of 83.
The
business of conquest lasted Harold about 12 years, in which he subdued
also the Vikings of the out-islands, Orkneys,
Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man.
His reign is counted altogether to have been over 70 years. These were
the times of Norse colonization, proud Norsemen flying into other lands,
to freer scenes, to Iceland,
more especially to the Faroe Islands, to the Orkney and the Shetland
Islands, the Hebrides, England,
France,
and other countries where Norse squatters and Norse settlers already were.
Anent
this season of subduing and driving out the recalcitrant Norwegian Jarls by
Harold, the following relation is made in the Heimskringla
or History of
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